Tag: Death

End of Life ‘Care’

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems6 Comments

These people see me now as something old;
A dusty, wrinkled thing – long broken down —
Not someone vibrant, who, with manifold
Expressive loving gifts dons this green gown

For I am no one now; not anyone.
These owlish, peering eyes that merely stare
Try to invoke humanity in them:
They look past me as though I was not there

They don’t mean ill, they do not feel at all;
I’m just another client in a bed —
Who’s so unprepossessing in his mien
That should I, in five minutes, turn up dead,

They’ll register that there are no heartbeats:
Then merely move the corpse, and change the sheets

The Pride of Lucy

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems5 Comments

Lucy sat out in the sun
In cold and clear September;
She modeled for us her new life,
I always will remember

The pride she wore upon her face
As she soaked in the rays;
Not knowing pills and Crystal Head
Would soon cut short her days.

The pride of Lucy, young and full
Of beauty and its power;
The sharpened razor blades, so cold,
That hacked to death

The flower

 

(“The Pride of Lucy” – 12-27-2015)

Bed Space

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems8 Comments

So many more will sleep upon this bed,

And most will live to see a better day;

But this – this was your final place to rest

Before the sleep of death took you away

 

You’d reconciled yourself in recent times,

Though Lord knows how, you found peace with the past —

This little space, these flimsy linen sheets,

Were all you had to comfort you at last

 

This bed space, thoughtlessly, will soon be cleaned;

New patients always come, it must be said —

But just us few, whenever we may pass,

Will think of your last days

Upon this

Bed

The Lonely Night

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems1 Comment

The lonely night is never done;
It stretches on, in endless wake –
And closes in with memories
And dreams, beneath a constant ache

To walk upon the haunted earth,
To lie upon a sleepless bed,
To hope for nothing but the dark,
And pray that slumber’s just ahead –

But restless, rising up to go,
To walk out towards the waxing light –
These barren trees, they know the dark,
They’ve wrestled with the lonely night

The day will come – it always has –
But eyes will not be there to see:
The night will claim its prize at last,
The pride in you
The hope in me

Graveyard Walk

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems23 Comments

Graveyard in Fall

Light, the leaves beneath my feet
Soft and silent is the way;
There among the many who
Walked the paths of yesterday

Cool, blows Autumn on the air
Through the paths and stones I thread;
To take counsel with my thoughts
There among the vaulted dead

Those, there are who morbid call
Graveyard roaming such as this;
But its living and not dying
That is truly
The
Abyss

 

(“Graveyard Walk” – 10-24-2014)

Shoes

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems2 Comments

He’d heard that shoes could make the man.
And so he chose them, carefully:
To show his mastery and span
Of wide parts of society

But one day, when he had to go,
He left one here, to long decay;
It’s empty of its context now,
And baldly shorn of its cachet

For things that outward we display,
Without our inwards, lack all worth:
Like tracks whose trains have gone away,
Or blogs whose authors flee
The earth

The Show Goes On

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

The show goes on; the dead have played their part.
But still we wait for one more cue, or line:
Those ne’er said words that we have known by heart,
And memorized, as though a valentine

That we will never feel in hand, or see.
The looked for, listened for, and waited on
That will not heed our cry, or hear our plea;
For love’s most fully owned when it is gone.

The show goes on; the dead have played their role,
But there’s no point in dialogue, or mark;
You live, although you’re missing half your soul,
A sunflower within the gray and dark —

    For none of it makes any kind of sense,
    The scene, the plot, the play, the

    Audience